BleepingComputer.com: Memory Drain? Or Sucking Chest Wound

Thank you in advance for looking at my post.

I have a gateway essential 500. running win. 98se

My Norton anti-virus and personal firewall were out of date and no longer supported. Both were 2002 versions. The anti virus uninstalled ok, but the firewall did not. I had to use rnis.exe from the Norton disc to uninstall. Then did a search for leftovers. Deleted those. Then I made the fatal error. I downloaded the free anti-virus and zonealarm from my internet provider, sbc yahoo. The anti-virus was from CA, computer associates. After that, restart would take 10 minutes, also I had extensive lag in my mouse(while programs opened only) and Microsoft word would take 4 minutes to open, as well as anything else I tried to open, including my browser, I use IE. It also seems to have affected the speed of my internet. The program open sound effects would skip like a bad record (you know the antique black plastic ones) the entire time the program was opening. It even affected solitaire.

So I removed the stuff from sbc, zonealarm and spent a lot of time cleaning out my bleeping computer. I used Norton utilities win doctor and disc doctor, c cleaner, ad aware and spybot. I also ran scan disc and disc cleanup, then did a defrag. I now use MCAfee anti-virus and firewall 2006. All I have left is a slow load up after restart(about 3-4 minutes), slow program load(about 1 minute) , and a slight mouse lag only while programs are opening. The skipping is now gone. Once I open a program it runs normally, after I close it, it will reopen normally unless I do a restart or the computer sits idle for few hours. I tried turning off the screen saver too, no help there.
Sometimes the resource monitor will pop up after restart. It says last reboot was at 95% now it is 78%. I have no error messages and no missing file messages.

I also went into the msconfig and removed some programs from the startup menu. Mostly useless stuff, copy/fax machine, digital camera, task monitor, quick time, mouse update utility. Which didn’t help any.
That’s when I found the file
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\symtray.exe. I went to the file and it is loaded with files & applications . When I did a file search nothing came up. I used Norton and Symantic as key words. There is nothing in my programs menu either.
Could this leftover from Norton be causing my problem?
I have heard that you must remove "everything" from an anti-virus before installing a new one. Is that true?
If it is, how do I remove it. I assume I cannot just delete it. I like to err on the side of caution
Also I have heard that Norton can sometimes take files it shouldn’t when it gets uninstalled, Is that true?

Again Thank you for whatever help is offered.
tom m

Yes, I believe you can just delete the contents of that folder, and check
to see that no remaining HKEYs point to it.

I use this app to check the registry.
Check, not necessarily delete, the keys.

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/

Choose Registry from left hand options menu.
Once in that mode, open tools from the top
and second down is "registry cleaner".
This app errs in favor of conservative, too.
It'll give you default excludes based on tight keywords
and good definitions of those it finds "probably safe to delete".

I don't think it is causing problems, but ...
what else is in the C:\Program Files\Common Files?

File checking is another forte of the jv16 power tool
(a standard tool for quite some time now)

Seems like you can use the info this program can give you,
and proceed with awareness. You're doing good, tom
thanks for checking with BC and joining.

This post has been edited by phawgg: 16 January 2006 - 11:23 PM

Thank you Phawgg.
I'll give those a try and keep my fingers crossed.
I certainly didn't expect such a quick reply.
tom

Hello tom m and welcome to BC.

According to our Startup Programs Database symtray.exe manages the icons for Norton Systemworks. I would imagine this could be disabled by going to Start>Run>and typing in msconfig. If symtray.exe is listed under the Startup tab then uncheck it. Look for any other unneeded programs that are also starting when you boot.

I suggest running a program like Ccleaner followed by a Scandisk and Defrag.

Quote

Its possible but not likely. The components you need to remove are the active ones like that file. Other things like the Quarantine won't do any harm if they are left behind.

This post has been edited by Leurgy: 19 January 2006 - 08:10 AM